Vampire Bloodlines 2’s soundtrack is courtesy of WoW composers Craig Garfinkle and Eímear Noone

The Chinese Room pulled the curtain back on Vampire Bloodlines 2’s soundtrack, and it turns out two World of Warcraft veterans are composing the RPG’s score

The Chinese Room

The Chinese Room pulled the curtain back on Vampire Bloodlines 2’s soundtrack, and it turns out two World of Warcraft veterans are composing the RPG’s score. Craig Garfinkle and Eímear Noone, both of whom created the music for World of Warcraft at various points of their careers, are composing Bloodlines 2’s OST, though with a bit of indirect help from Hardsuit Labs’ composer.

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Garfinkle and Noone might have won awards for their work on World of Warcraft, but their lengthy careers are full of other achievements, as well. These range from award-winning scores for films and documentaries, music for TV productions, and even scoring stageplays.

The Chinese Room team said in a new dev diary that the studio, Garfinkle, and Noone wanted to use as much of the score that Hardsuit Labs composer Rik Schaffer crafted before Paradox handed development to TCR. That, along with the shift from sweeping fantasy to gritty urban realism, presented a unique set of challenges for everyone involved, ones that required equally unique solutions.

After Garfinkle and Noone started creating their own score, The Chinese Room said the dev team realized Schaffer’s music was a perfect complement to the new soundtrack. They looked for ways to weave it around Garfinkle and Noone’s work wherever they could, including battle themes and specific location music. Meanwhile, Garfinkle took an unorthodox approach to creating unearthly sounds he hoped would fit with Bloodlines 2’s themes, including banging shovels together to get the right supersonic pitch for one specific scene.

It might be easy to take little sounds, such as clashing shovels, for granted, but The Chinese Room said they took special care to ensure every sound comes across naturally to the player and fits with whatever scenario is unfolding at the time. Combat music has different states depending on where an enemy is in relation to you at the moment and whether violence is actually occurring. They also implemented a system that distorts and projects music to match the environment – for example, changing how you hear it when you walk around a corner as opposed to standing in the middle of a room.

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Bloodlines 2 even has subtle vocal elements to complement seduction scenes and add an element of humanity to your inhuman doings. Expect a nuanced accompaniment for the Blood Resonance system that changes depending on which emotions you're trying to evoke in your prey.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 still doesn’t have a release date, but The Chinese Room expects to launch it sometime in 2025.